The Brocade SLX family is set to grow, with the introduction of SLX 9140, SLX 9240 and SLX 9540 data center switches.

The about-to-be-acquired company also announced that its Workflow Composer platform would receive a number of Automation Suites for turnkey automation.

Brocade stadium
Levi’s Stadium, San Francisco – Brocade

Switched on

Brocade says that the latest crop of switches builds on the functionality of the recently announced SLX 9850 routing solution, with SLX 9140 and 9240 adding a programmable application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that “provides Visibility Services from the physical wire to virtual networks and workloads.”

The SLX 9140 leaf switch provides 48x25 GbE native server-facing ports and 6x100 GbE ports in a 1U fixed form-factor, as well as flexible 1/10/25/40/100 GbE configuration options.

The SLX 9240 spine switch, meanwhile, has 32x100 GbE ports in a 1U fixed form-factor.

Jason Nolet, SVP of Brocade’s Switching, Routing and Analytics Products Group, said: “Organizations that are going through digital transformation need networks that are extremely agile, extensively automated and highly visible.

“Brocade is delivering the breadth and depth of flexibility and agility that sets us apart from other network providers. We do so vertically across the data center stack, and horizontally across domains within the data center —while being open at every layer.”

The SLX 9140 and SLX 9240 are expected to hit the market in January next year, while the SLX 9540 is out today. 

Brocade Workflow Composer’s new automation suites will be available for preview in December with general availability planned for February next year. Brocade revealed three suites - Network Essentials, Data Center Fabric Automation and Internet Exchange Points.